On Monday I posted this photo from the Seattle Times.
Well, today we learn that the woman who took the photo has been fired for it, as has her husband, who worked with her.
They both worked for Maytag Aircraft, a contractor providing services to the U.S. government in Kuwait. She's not a professional photographer, she just snapped the photo and sent it to a friend in the states, who passed it along to the newspaper.
A spokesman for Maytag said that the decision to fire her was made by the company, but he also said that "the U.S. military had identified 'very specific concerns' about their actions." He declined to elaborate.
I was interested to find out that the policy prohibiting photos of caskets dates to 1991 and the first Gulf War. The Pentagon predictably justifies it as a matter of respect for the families of the fallen, but to my mind that's a lot of crap.
Certainly we should be sensitive to the feelings of the families of these soldiers, but the public's need and right to have an honest impression of the costs of waging war, particularly a preemptive, controversial war like this one, far outweighs any notion of deference to the families. I would be interested to see a study on whether or not this is in any way what those families want, anyway.
